Whats the per slot bandwidth on that badboy? It looks like it retains the 720gbps/chassis of the 7609, but I would assume that the 8x 10gbE card wouldn't be sitting on a 40g slot unless it's deigned for 1+1 redundancy?

I'm not exactly sure what the thought process is, from what I understand it was ordered with very specific instructions and specifications and the client built the boxes and created the configuration. The job here is to assemble, test, test, test, test, test, make it run for a few days then test again, box them up and put them in a vehicle that you'll drive yourself. You can't take any chances here.

As far as deployment, these will be hooked up to 4x ASA5585 (»www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collate ··· 4415.pdf) with 8x 10GbE optical connections and then connect to a whole slew of ISPs via multiple 1GbE and 10GbE connections. A mix of multimode and singlemode optical circuits. These routers will provide internet access as well as MPLS cloud services, all wired up through diverse DWDM rings. These two will probably serve an average of 3 million users on any given weekday.

Even though I had nothing to do with the physical configuration of the boxes, the RSP720-3C-10GE supervisor engine is the perfect choice here as it works great with triple-play services (voice, video data) and is great on layer 2 and layer 3, IPv4 or IPv6, hundreds of millions of packets per second, gigabits of switching, blah blah... If you're interested Cisco has a lot to say about this SUP here: »www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collate ··· 579f.pdf

Basically what it comes down to, for almost $700,000 you know these will do what Cisco promises you.

What I would really be interested in seeing is how a pair of these would perform against a Juniper router, or even a better a home made machine running some form of Linux FW/Routing software. Service provider level of route and switching is not really my forte as I specialize in unified communications and infrastructure architecture, but after seeing these I think that I want to pursue more projects that involve this type of gear. Because building something that services millions of people is way cooler than delivering service to a thousand people.

i.e. you can buy XFPs that are tuneable (either on the fly by the device they are installed in, or using some sort of programming device), so as long as you can get a NIC that takes an XFP, you can run what ever C band wavelength you want out of it.

They make XFP nics, but they are rare and costly. Not as costly as this piece of equipment, but still costly. You also have to worry then about things like driver compatibility and XFP compatibility, and your out of luck if you need more than 4 interfaces (single port only per card).

I would have thought they'd use Juniper or a CRS if that were the case imo.

It dosen't look to be very populated for a 13 slot chassis (they do make a 7606 and 7609). The 7609 (720Gbps) also has double the throughput capacity of the 7613 (256Gbps) (at least according to Cisco). This is just semantics and curiosity though, they bought what they bought after all.

Maybe they've had slimier experience with juniper as I have. (IE most buggy POS ever, firmware gets corrupt every couple months is seems, and somehow a single device that couldn't be looping back causes a juniper to go into broadcast storm.)

Thats a very broad and generalised statement to make. Juniper is used extensively in SP networks all over the globe, and low and behold the Internet is not melting into a puddle on the floor.

Perhaps you had a bad experience with a piece of kit, but you cant tar all Juniper devices with the same brush.

Ive seen Juniper devices running for years without a single issue. Ive also seen Cisco devices do the same. Funny that...

Juniper is not perfect, and neither is Cisco, or any manufacturer for that matter. They all experience issues and bugs. Regression testing of new firmware versions before pushing to production and proper environments for housing equipment will go far in ensuring you have a stable and reliable network.

I would have thought they'd use Juniper or a CRS if that were the case imo.

crs are in a niche market -- and they are generally used for a lot of the heavy core switching.most of your edge/peering is still done with 6500/7600, asr1k, asr9k, or even the 12k (rare -- as these are slowly being phased out of production).in the juniper world -- you're looking at an mx-box -- like the 80, 240, 480, or 960.

q.--"...if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself..."

I would have thought they'd use Juniper or a CRS if that were the case imo.

crs are in a niche market -- and they are generally used for a lot of the heavy core switching.most of your edge/peering is still done with 6500/7600, asr1k, asr9k, or even the 12k (rare -- as these are slowly being phased out of production).in the juniper world -- you're looking at an mx-box -- like the 80, 240, 480, or 960.

q.

Good to know, thanks tubby. I haven't dealt with much beyond 39XX series devices as far as WAN goes as most of what I find myself dealing with is LAN/Nexus. Do you know what Cisco is going to replace the 12k with? Also, why would they choose the 13 slot chassis over the 9 slot, especially since it's not populated anywhere near capacity in the photos.

i Work for a big telco and we use all three ,cisco,juniper,and Fujitsu.Gov makes sure you purchase from all three so there is not one going out of business.They all work really well and interface with each other well in all diverse rings.